Case Number 23276: Small Claims Court

Fireflies in the Garden

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All Rise...

Judge Gordon Sullivan has fire ants in his garden.

The Charge

For one family, a chance to start again.

The Case

January is usually the month that Hollywood dumps its unwanted features on
the world, films that it made but can't figure out how to market. Flicks that
sounded good on paper but have tested poorly get released into the frozen
wastelands of the pre-Oscar season. Some true stinkers get at least a few
screens every year, so I'm always amazed when a solid-looking film with a decent
cast takes years to get to the screen. That's the case with Fireflies in the
Garden. It's a film that was made in 2008 starring Ryan Reynolds, Willem
Dafoe, and Julia Roberts, but it didn't get even a limited theatrical release
until 2011. I know that Ryan Reynolds wasn't the box office force he would
become in a few short years, but with a solid dramatic premise and a cast like
this there's no excuse for Fireflies in the Garden to not have wider
exposure. Thanks to this DVD, fans of the actors will have a chance to
appreciate a good, if not great, family drama.

The Taylors are a picture-perfect family. Charles (Willem Dafoe, The Boondock Saints) is an
important professor, Michael (Ryan Reynolds, The Proposal) is a successful novelist, and
Ryne (Shannon Lucio, Prison Break)
has a bright career in law ahead of her. The family is gathered to celebrate the
graduation of Lisa (Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman) from college years after
taking a leave of absence to raise her children. When Lisa is killed in a car
accident, the family is brought together by grief, and we slowly watch their
beautiful surfaces crack under the tension.

Unsurprisingly, the main attraction of Fireflies in the Garden is its
superb cast. Besides the few actors I mentioned above (Reynolds, Defoe, Roberts)
Fireflies also features contributions from Emily Watson, Carrie Anne
Moss, Ioan Gruffudd, and Hayden Panettiere. Because the film features flashbacks
there are opportunities for roles to be doubled. Generally, the acting from the
cast is superb. Occasionally there's a tendency to rely a bit on generic
stereotypes, like when Willem Dafoe gets a bit overbearing as the family
patriarch. However, the acting is generally top notch, especially for this kind
of tear-jerking premise. Though things get a bit over-the-top in moments, for
the most part the performances here are solid and affecting.

I'm still baffled as to why Fireflies in the Garden didn't get
released immediately to strong reviews, but part of it might be that the film
flouts expectations. The premise is ridiculously melodramatic. A tightly wound
Midwestern family brought together by the death of their mother sounds like a
recipe for a bad three-hanky picture. To a certain extent, Fireflies in the
Garden is that film, complete with revelations, betrayals, and histrionics,
but it doesn't immediately turn the emotion controls up to eleven and keep them
there for all 89 minutes. Instead, Fireflies in the Garden goes for a bit
of restraint, offering a number of quieter, more contemplative moments. This
gives the melodramatic premise some breathing room that similar films have
sorely lacked.

It helps that this is a solid DVD release. The 2.40:1 anamorphic transfer is
generally bright and clean, with a decent amount of detail in both close ups and
longer shots. Darker scenes have appropriate black levels, and digital artifacts
aren't a significant problem. The 5.1 surround track keeps the dialogue coming
clean and clear out of the center channel, though there isn't much
directionality or use of the surrounds. That's not a huge problem with a
dialogue-driven drama like this one, though. The disc's lone extra is a
19-minute making-of featurette that plays like an extended EPK. Because of the
length, there's plenty of time to mix interviews with most of the actors and
writer/director Dennis Lee, along with footage from the finished film.

Fireflies in the Garden can be an understated, well-acted drama. It
can also slip into cliché and rely on tired stereotypes of Midwestern,
salt-of-the-earth simplicity. For everything it does right (and there's plenty),
there's the feeling that it's not doing anything particularly new. In that way,
the film fails to take any serious risks, relying solely on the actors to pull
off a story that's not very different from a dozen other stories of heartache
and pain in American families we've seen for decades. Another way to say this
might be that Fireflies in the Garden is missing some essential spark
that would take it from being good to being great.

Fireflies in the Garden is an above average family drama, but one
that's not quite great. It features an excellent cast, and fans of any of the
actors could do worse than spend a night with this film. The strong DVD
presentation makes it easy to recommend for at least a rental.